Asics is a Japanese company that makes running shoes, and it is currently one of the best-performing sportswear businesses in the world. Sales have doubled in five years. Operating profit is up more than sixfold. But the part almost nobody reports correctly is why: the growth is not coming from running. It is coming from lifestyle sneakers and from Onitsuka Tiger, the fashion label Asics is about to spin into a separate company. And in India — where the brand has been quietly sponsoring the Mumbai Marathon since 2008 — Asics is cheaper, before tax, than it is in America.
Asics is a Japanese running-shoe company having its best decade, and every model we could price is cheaper in India than in America once tax is stripped out — by 11% to 25%. About 30% of what it sells here is made here, which is most of the explanation. The growth is coming from lifestyle sneakers rather than running, and Onitsuka Tiger leaves the group on 1 January 2027.
Snapshot
- Founded
- 1949, Kobe, Japan, by Kihachiro Onitsuka — as Onitsuka Shokai, with two employees and ¥300,000 of capital
- The name
- From the Latin Anima Sana In Corpore Sano — a sound mind in a sound body. Adopted in 1977, when Onitsuka merged with GTO and Jelenk
- Owned by
- Nobody in particular. Listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (7936), no founding family stake, 55.4% of the register held outside Japan
- Global sales
- ¥810.9 billion in FY2025, up 19.5%. Guidance for FY2026 is ¥1,050 billion — crossing a trillion yen
- Growth engine
- SportStyle +43.6% and Onitsuka Tiger +43.0% in FY2025, against Performance Running at +11.2%
- In India since
- Marathon sponsorship from 2008; third-party distribution to 2015; own entity incorporated 3 May 2012; first store July 2015
- India revenue
- ₹556.53 crore for the year to March 2025, up about 30%. The parent reports India sales up 45.3% in the first half of 2026
- Made where
- Around 30% of what Asics sells in India is now made in India, targeting 40%
- India price band
- ₹3,999 to ₹29,999. The Kayano 33 is ₹16,999
Where Asics came from
Kihachiro Onitsuka founded the company in Kobe in 1949, four years after the war ended. His own account of the motive is unusually plain: a sense of stagnation still hung over Japan, and he believed that fostering healthy youth was essential to the country’s revival. His motto was “if you start with what’s difficult, everything else will come easy.”
The first shoe was a basketball shoe in 1950. The second, in 1951, is the story everyone tells: the Suction Cup Basketball Shoe, whose sole Onitsuka designed after looking at vinegared octopus on his dinner table. It is a company-told origin story rather than an independently verified one, but Asics tells it consistently and includes the unflattering half — the grip turned out to be too good, and players tripped. It had to be redesigned.
Marathon shoes followed in 1953. In 1966 came the Mexico Line, the crossed stripes that are still the Asics logo on every shoe the company makes. And in 1977 Onitsuka merged with two other Japanese firms, GTO and Jelenk, and the combined company took the name Asics.
- Onitsuka ShokaiKobe, 1949 — two employees, ¥300,000 of capital
- Merger with GTO and Jelenk1977, and a new name from a Latin motto
- Asics CorporationTokyo-listed; ¥810.9 billion of sales in FY2025
The Onitsuka name survives as a fashion label, which is where most of the growth now is.
The Nike story, told properly
This is the most-repeated fact about Asics and the most-mangled, so here is what is actually established and what is not.
In 1962 a Stanford graduate named Phil Knight visited Onitsuka in Japan, improvised a company name on the spot — Blue Ribbon Sports of Portland, Oregon — and walked out with United States distribution rights for the Tiger Limber Up. He paid $50 for samples. Blue Ribbon Sports formally launched in January 1964 with Knight’s old coach Bill Bowerman as a fifty-fifty partner. By 1966 Knight had exclusive American distribution for Onitsuka’s whole track and field line.
In 1968 Bowerman proposed combining two Onitsuka models, the Spring Up and the Limber Up, into a single training shoe. Onitsuka manufactured it. It went on sale in America in 1969 as the Cortez, and it became the shoe of the American jogging boom.
Then, in 1971, Knight launched Nike as a separate brand while still under contract to Onitsuka. Onitsuka found out in 1972 and the two fell out.
Neither side got the shoe. Both companies kept selling it. Nike kept the name Cortez; Onitsuka sold the identical shoe under the name Corsair. That is why both shoes exist today.
The turning points
1986, GEL. A silicone visco-elastic insert in the heel, and the technology the brand was built on for thirty years. Worth being precise about what it does, because the marketing has never been: GEL is a damping material, not an energy-return material. It absorbs shock. It does not give it back. Modern foams do a different job, which is why the current GEL-Kayano 33 uses PureGEL in the heel but does its actual work with two layers of foam over it.
1990, the GEL-Lyte III. Designed by Shigeyuki Mitsui, and the source of the single most recognisable design signature in Japanese sneakers: the split tongue. It was not a styling flourish. Runners complained that tongues slid sideways, so Mitsui cut it in two. Mitsui retired in 2025 after thirty-two years.
1993, the GEL-Kayano. Named after its designer, Toshikazu Kayano, and still running thirty-three generations later. It defined the premium stability category and is the reason a certain kind of runner has bought nothing else since the nineties.
2002, Onitsuka Tiger comes back. Asics relaunched the old name in Europe as a fashion label rather than a sports brand, reasoning that as the high-tech sneaker boom of the nineties faded, young buyers were turning to vintage. That year it introduced the Mexico 66.
2003, Kill Bill. Uma Thurman wore an Onitsuka Tiger in yellow and the brand has been described in relation to that film ever since — Reuters still calls it “Asics’ Kill Bill sneaker brand” twenty-three years later. One correction, because it is nearly always wrong: the Kill Bill shoe is the Tai Chi, not the Mexico 66.
2025, the American research hub. Asics committed $25 million to a research institute on the University of Michigan campus, covering biomechanics, exercise physiology and AI-driven design — its first outside Japan.
Where the growth is actually coming from
Here is the finding that should change how you read every article about the Asics revival. In FY2025, running grew 11%. Everything else grew forty-three.
Onitsuka Tiger has gone from ¥33.9 billion in 2020 to ¥136.5 billion in 2025, at a category profit margin of about 38% — the highest in the company. SportStyle, the retro-running line that includes the GEL-Kayano 14, the GEL-1130 and the GEL-NYC, did ¥141.3 billion. Together those two lifestyle businesses are now worth more than Asics’ entire running division was in 2021.
And Asics is about to separate them. On 10 June 2026 the company announced that the Onitsuka Tiger business — roughly 160 countries, about 190 directly operated stores and 2,800 employees — will transfer to a new wholly owned subsidiary, OT Group Corporation, effective 1 January 2027. The stated reason is faster decision-making and clearer visibility of performance by segment.
To be clear, because this will be reported wrongly: Asics is not selling Onitsuka Tiger. It is putting it in its own box, which it wholly owns, with no plan to list it. That is what you do with an asset you intend to keep and run harder.
How Asics came to India
Asics did something in India that almost no imported sportswear brand does: it sponsored the running before it sold the shoes. It has been associated with the Mumbai Marathon since 2008 — seven years before it opened a single store here. Today it also partners the New Delhi Marathon, the TCS World 10K in Bengaluru and the Hyderabad Marathon, and it spends about 6% of its annual Indian sales on marathon sponsorship and running-club management.
The commercial sequence ran alongside that. Third-party distribution from 2008, including a five-year exclusive agreement with Reliance Retail from 2010 which Asics chose not to renew — its India head said at the time that the market had matured. Asics India Private Limited was incorporated in Gurugram on 3 May 2012, began operating as a wholesale distributor in 2014, and opened its first company store, all 670 square feet of it, in a south Delhi mall in July 2015. Onitsuka Tiger’s first Indian mono-brand store followed in Mumbai in 2017.
One honest wrinkle: sources disagree on when third-party distribution actually began. Asics India’s own marketing director dates it to 2008; the Reliance agreement is documented from 2010. Both can be true if there was an earlier distributor, and we are printing both rather than smoothing it.
The numbers. Asics India’s operating revenue was ₹341 crore to March 2023, ₹428.2 crore to March 2024, and ₹556.53 crore to March 2025. Note what happened in FY2024, because it is the interesting bit: revenue rose 25.6% and net profit fell slightly, from ₹55.1 crore to ₹53.6 crore. Asics India bought that growth. The parent’s own reporting says India sales rose 45.3% in the first half of 2026, and Southeast and South Asia is now the company’s fastest-growing region, up 33.4% in FY2025.
The store count is a different story. Asics went from 103 stores in June 2024 to about 138 in 2026, and said in August 2025 it was targeting 200 by the end of 2026. On that trajectory it will not get there. We say so because the site’s job is to read a target against the run rate, not to reprint it.
And Asics makes shoes here. About 30% of what it sells in India is now made in India, with a target of 40% within three years. The stated reasons are margin and the BIS Quality Control Order on footwear, which took effect on 1 August 2024 and covers sports footwear — Asics actually paused imports at one point because of the certification requirement. Onitsuka Tiger has separately been exploring an Indian manufacturing base by 2028.
- 2008Starts sponsoring the Mumbai Marathon
- 2012Indian entity incorporated, 3 May
- 2015First store opens; third-party distribution ends
- 2025₹556.53 crore for the year to March, up about 30%
The parent reported Indian sales up 45.3% again in the first half of 2026.
The models that matter
| Model | Year | What it changed |
|---|---|---|
| Mexico Line | 1966 | The crossed stripes. Every Asics and every Onitsuka Tiger still wears them |
| Cortez / Corsair | 1969 | The shoe at the centre of the Nike split, and the archetype of the American jogging boom |
| GEL-Lyte III | 1990 | The split tongue — a fix for a real runner complaint that became the brand’s design signature |
| GEL-Kayano | 1993 | Defined premium stability running for three decades. Now in its 33rd generation |
| Mexico 66 | 2002 | The vehicle for the entire Onitsuka Tiger relaunch, and now one of the most-copied shoes in the world |
| GEL-Kayano 14 | 2008, revived | The silver retro runner that started the whole trend. Asics now sells it as a lifestyle shoe, not a running shoe |
| Novablast | 2020 | Bouncy, springy, fun. The model that made Asics interesting to runners who were not already loyal |
| GEL-NYC | 2024 | Built out of Kayano and Nimbus-era parts. A defining sneaker of the retro-running boom |
| Metaspeed Ray | 2025 | 129 grams, and Asics’ most credible answer yet to the carbon-plate era |
On Metaspeed specifically, one thing deserves saying: the plate geometry differs by runner type, with Sky built for runners who lengthen their stride and Edge for runners who raise their cadence, while the Ray carries only a minimal plate. That is a genuine engineering position rather than a marketing one. Equally, Asics’ own launch material makes no percentage running-economy claim — so any “X% more efficient” figure you see attached to these shoes did not come from Asics.
The credibility is real where it counts. At the 2026 Boston Marathon, John Korir won the men’s race in 2:01:52 — a course record by over a minute — in a Metaspeed Sky prototype, and Asics put seven runners in the top ten of both fields. The women’s race was won in another brand’s shoe, which we mention because leaving it out would be the kind of selective reporting this site exists to correct.
What Asics costs in India
Prices checked 21 August 2026. Method first, and its limits: Asics does not publish Indian prices we could verify, so no price below comes from Asics’ own Indian site. Indian MRPs come from Flipkart, Foot Locker India, VegNonVeg and the official Onitsuka Tiger India store. American prices come from asics.com. Indian MRPs include 18% GST; American list prices exclude sales tax, so the comparison below strips the GST out first.
| Model | India MRP | India ex-GST | US list | US converted |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GEL-Kayano 33 | ₹16,999 | ₹14,406 | $170 | ₹16,276 |
| GEL-Kayano 14 | ₹13,999 | ₹11,864 | $165 | ₹15,797 |
| GEL-NYC | ₹12,999 | ₹11,016 | $150 | ₹14,361 |
| GEL-1130 | ₹9,999 | ₹8,474 | $110 | ₹10,531 |
| Mexico 66 | ₹12,500 | ₹10,593 | — | — |
| Metaspeed Ray | About ₹29,999 (brand’s stated top price) | ₹25,423 | $300 | ₹28,722 |
Every model we could check is cheaper in India than in America, before tax, by between 11% and 25%. That is an unusual finding for an imported premium brand here, and it is the opposite of what the duty arithmetic would predict — an imported sneaker pays 20% basic customs duty plus an 18.5% cess, none of it recoverable, and 18% GST on top of that at every price point Asics sells at.
Three things explain it, and the audit would be dishonest without all three.
One, the rupee. At about ₹95.7 to the dollar, American list prices convert into large rupee numbers. At ₹85 the same comparison would show rough parity. The finding is real but it is rate-dependent, and the rate is dated.
Two, roughly 30% of Asics’ Indian volume is made in India and pays no import duty at all. Blended pricing across a part-domestic, part-imported range is not a clean test of duty pass-through. This is the same mechanism that lets Puma price the way it does here.
Three, list is not transaction. On the day we checked, VegNonVeg was selling the GEL-1130 at ₹7,000 against a ₹9,999 MRP, and Foot Locker India had a GEL-NYC at ₹7,800 against ₹12,999. Real Indian transaction prices are lower again — though American list gets discounted too.
The conclusion still stands, and it is the interesting one: Asics is not using India as a duty-recovery market. It is pricing to buy share in the market it has publicly named as its fastest-growing, in a way Nike is not.
- GEL-Kayano 33 in the US, list
- $170, about ₹16,276
- GEL-Kayano 33 in India, ex-GST
- ₹14,406 (MRP ₹16,999)
- Gap
- 11.5% cheaper in India
- Checked on
- 21 August 2026
Asics is pricing India to win it, not to recover a duty bill.
Who Asics is actually for
If you run, and particularly if you run long and need the shoe to hold its shape at the end of it, Asics is the most straightforwardly credible brand on this list. The Kayano has been iterated for thirty-three generations, the Nimbus for nearly as long, and the company runs its own sport science institute in Kobe with an actual all-weather track. That is not marketing infrastructure; it is research infrastructure. Running is 58% of Asics India’s business and that is who it is built for, in a way it is not for New Balance or Skechers here.
If you want a sneaker rather than a running shoe, the honest advice is that you are buying into the same trend that has quadrupled Asics’ lifestyle revenue — the GEL-Kayano 14, the GEL-1130, the GEL-NYC, the Mexico 66. They are good shoes and they are priced fairly here. Just know that the Kayano 14 you are buying is sold by Asics itself as a lifestyle product, not a running one. It is a 2008 running shoe being sold as fashion, which is exactly what it is.
Skip Asics if what you want is arch support as a medical outcome. GEL is a damping material. Stability structures like Trusstic and Duomax do a real mechanical job, but the honest claim is shock absorption and torsional rigidity, not correction.
Reputation and controversies
Xinjiang, and what did not happen. In March 2021 Asics’ China social media account posted that the company would continue sourcing cotton from Xinjiang. Head office in Kobe called an emergency meeting two days later and said the statement was unauthorised and not the company’s position. That much is fully documented.
What is not documented, and what circulates anyway: Asics does not appear in the 82-brand list of the ASPI report on Uyghur forced labour — we checked the list — and it does not appear in the corporate-responses annex of the Sheffield Hallam “Laundering Cotton” report either. A single campaign website asserts a supply-chain link without naming a supplier. On a site whose whole purpose is fighting misinformation, that is not enough, and we are not repeating it.
Russia. Asics exited completely after the 2022 invasion, closing its single Moscow store and around $13 million of Russian revenue. On the spectrum of corporate responses to that question, it is on the clean end.
Environment. Asics has science-based targets approved as 1.5°C-aligned, joined RE100 in 2020, and is committed to net zero by 2050. It also publishes the numbers that make those targets look hard, which is more than many do. Against a 2015 base year, Scope 1 and 2 emissions — its own operations — were down 22%. Scope 3, which is 96% of its footprint, was down 3.1% against a 63% target. Renewable electricity was 26.7% against a 100%-by-2030 goal.
Set that beside sales doubling between 2021 and 2025 and the tension is obvious: Asics has promised a 63% cut in supply-chain emissions while selling roughly twice as many shoes. It is not being dishonest about it. It simply has not solved it, and neither has anyone else in this industry.
What it gave footwear
A cushioning material that was honest about what it did. GEL in 1986 was a silicone damping insert, and for thirty years Asics built a running franchise on shock absorption at a time when the rest of the industry was selling air and energy return. It is less exciting and it is more accurate.
The split tongue. Small, and the best example of Asics’ actual design method: a runner complaint, a mechanical fix, and a solution that turned out to be so distinctive it became an identity.
Research as an institution. The Institute of Sport Science in Kobe was founded in 1985 and opened as a physical facility in 1990, with a track, tennis courts and an experimental gymnasium. It is organised into named research areas — structural design, materials, human attributes, data analytics — and in December 2025 Asics put $25 million into a second one at the University of Michigan. Very few footwear companies fund research at that scale as a permanent function rather than a campaign.
And a design archive nobody expected to be worth anything. The most valuable thing Asics owns right now may be a 1966 stripe and a 2008 running shoe in silver. It did not engineer that; it was sitting on it, and the culture came looking. What Asics did right was notice, and then run the lifestyle business as seriously as the running one — which is why SportStyle now carries a 34% operating margin.
Buying it in India
Buy from asics.co.in, onitsukatiger.com, an Asics-branded store, or the official brand storefronts on Flipkart, Amazon, Myntra, AJIO, Tata CLiQ, Foot Locker India and VegNonVeg. All of those carry genuine Asics.
The risk concentrates on one shoe. The Mexico 66 is a flat-soled leather-and-suede sneaker with no proprietary foam, no plate and no complicated construction — it is the easiest premium sneaker in the world to copy convincingly, and at ₹12,500 there is real margin in copying it. Asics’ own anti-counterfeiting page, worth noting, describes enforcement work in Vietnam, Thailand and China and does not mention India at all, publishes no seizure figures, and offers buyers no authentication guidance. That is a gap.
The structural point for Indian buyers is this: Asics runs about 138 stores here against roughly 800 wholesale points of sale. Most people buy where Asics does not control the counter. Five checks follow from that, and the last one is the one nobody tells you.
Buy where the brand controls the counter
An Asics-branded store, asics.co.in or onitsukatiger.com. On marketplaces, buy from the named brand storefront rather than a third-party seller sitting on the same listing.
Read the Legal Metrology label
Indian law requires the box to declare MRP inclusive of all taxes, country of origin, and the importer or packer. A missing or vague declaration is a legal failure before it is an authenticity question.
Be hardest on the Mexico 66
It is a flat leather-and-suede shoe with no foam technology and no plate, which makes it the easiest premium sneaker to copy convincingly. Most Indian fakes are this one model.
Use the price floor
The Mexico 66 is ₹12,500 at the official Indian store. Anything at a third of that is not a bargain, and social-commerce sellers are where the risk concentrates.
Know who wrote the guide you are reading
Asics publishes no consumer authentication guidance at all. Every “real vs fake” Mexico 66 guide online is written by a resale platform with a commercial interest, not by the brand.
Common questions
What does the name Asics mean?
It comes from the Latin Anima Sana In Corpore Sano — a sound mind in a sound body. The company adopted it in 1977, when founder Kihachiro Onitsuka’s firm merged with two others. Before that it was Onitsuka, and its sports shoes were sold as Onitsuka Tiger.
Did Nike steal the Cortez from Asics?
No, and nor did Asics steal it from Nike. Bill Bowerman of Blue Ribbon Sports designed it, Onitsuka manufactured it, and when the two fell out both kept selling it. Nike kept the name Cortez; Onitsuka renamed its version Corsair. Both shoes are on sale today.
Is Asics selling Onitsuka Tiger?
No. From 1 January 2027 the Onitsuka Tiger business moves into OT Group Corporation, which Asics wholly owns. There is no plan to list it. It is a reorganisation, not a sale.
Is Asics expensive in India?
Less than you would expect. Strip the 18% GST out of the Indian MRP and every model we checked was 11% to 25% cheaper than American list before sales tax. About 30% of what Asics sells here is made here, which is part of why.
Is GEL good for your joints?
GEL is a silicone insert that absorbs shock. That is a real mechanical function and Asics describes it accurately. It is not an energy-return technology and there is no medical claim attached to it. In the current Kayano, most of the cushioning work is done by foam, with GEL in the heel.
Which Asics shoes are most faked in India?
The Onitsuka Tiger Mexico 66, by a distance — it is simple to copy and sells at ₹12,500. The retro GEL silhouettes follow. Buy from asics.co.in, onitsukatiger.com, an Asics store, or a verified brand storefront on a marketplace rather than a third-party seller.
References
- Asics corporate history — the 1949 founding in Kobe as Onitsuka Shokai, the 1951 suction-cup shoe, the 1966 Mexico Line, GEL in 1986, the GEL-Kayano in 1993, and the 1977 merger that produced the name
- Onitsuka Tiger 75th anniversary history — Kihachiro Onitsuka’s postwar motivation, the octopus inspiration, and the 1969 US release of the Cortez
- Onitsuka Tiger founder profile — the grip proving excessive and causing players to trip, and Onitsuka’s motto
- Sneaker Freaker, Blue Ribbon Sports to Nike — the 1962 Kobe meeting, the 1964 launch with Bowerman, the 1968 Cortez proposal
- Complex, the Cortez and the Corsair — both companies keeping the shoe, Nike keeping the Cortez name, and Onitsuka renaming its version Corsair
- Asics FY2025 consolidated results — net sales ¥810,916m, operating profit ¥142,519m, and the category and regional breakdowns
- Asics FY2024 consolidated results — FY2024 net sales ¥678,526m and the Onitsuka Tiger and SportStyle trajectories
- Asics FY2021 consolidated results — the FY2021 base of ¥404,082m and the FY2020 loss
- Asics H1 2026 consolidated financial summary — SportStyle +83.0%, Onitsuka Tiger +35.9%, India sales ¥7.7bn up 45.3%, and FY2026 guidance of ¥1,050bn
- Asics shareholding structure — 55.4% non-Japanese ownership and the absence of a founding-family stake
- Asics, 10 June 2026 — the Onitsuka Tiger transfer to OT Group Corporation effective 1 January 2027, covering ~160 countries, ~190 stores and 2,800 employees
- SGI Europe — confirmation that there are no plans to list OT Group
- WWD — Shigeyuki Mitsui, the split tongue as a fix for tongues sliding sideways, and his 2025 retirement
- Onitsuka Tiger history, volume two — the 2002 relaunch as a fashion brand in Europe, the Mexico 66, and the Tai Chi in Kill Bill
- Reuters via FashionNetwork, 12 June 2026 — Onitsuka Tiger’s global expansion and the Kill Bill framing
- Asics Institute of Sport Science — what GEL does, Trusstic and Duomax, FlyteFoam, Guidesole, and the 1990 facility
- Asics research structure — the four named research areas
- Asics, 19 December 2025 — the $25 million research commitment at the University of Michigan
- Asics Japan, 4 June 2026 — the GEL-Kayano 33 specification, including PureGEL in the heel under two foam layers
- Asics, 2 May 2025 — the Metaspeed Ray, Sky Tokyo and Edge Tokyo, plate geometry by runner type, and the 129g weight
- Marathon Handbook — John Korir’s 2:01:52 course record in a Metaspeed Sky prototype and Asics’ seven top-ten finishes in both fields
- afaqs, 24 December 2025 — Mumbai Marathon association since 2008, third-party distribution to 2015, 134 stores, running at 58% of the India business
- Inside Retail Asia, July 2015 — the five-year Reliance Retail agreement and the decision not to renew it
- IBEF — the 2014 start of wholesale distribution and the 670 sq ft first store in July 2015
- Asics India Private Limited, registry record — incorporation 3 May 2012, the Gurugram office, capital and directors
- Asics India financials — ₹341 crore FY2023 and ₹428.2 crore FY2024 revenue, with net profit falling from ₹55.1 crore to ₹53.6 crore
- Asics India registry data — ₹556.53 crore operating revenue for the year to March 2025
- Retail News Asia, 17 June 2025 — 30% of Indian sales made in India rising to 40%, the paused imports, and the BIS motivation
- IMAGES BoF, 19 June 2024 — 103 stores and about 800 wholesale points of sale
- Indian Retailer, 11 August 2025 — the Connaught Place flagship and the 200-stores-by-2026 target
- SGI Europe — 138 stores, the ₹3,999–₹29,999 price band, 6% of India sales on marathon sponsorship, and Nike and adidas as the named competitive set
- adgully, 13 December 2025 — seventeen years with the Tata Mumbai Marathon and the other Indian race partnerships
- Flipkart — GEL-Kayano 33 at ₹16,999 MRP, checked 21 August 2026
- Foot Locker India — GEL-Kayano 14, GEL-NYC and Novablast Indian prices, checked 21 August 2026
- VegNonVeg — GEL-1130 and GEL-NYC Indian prices and live discounting, checked 21 August 2026
- Asics US — GEL-Kayano 33 at $170, checked 21 August 2026
- Asics US Metaspeed collection — Metaspeed Ray at $300 and the rest of the range
- Onitsuka Tiger India — Mexico 66 at ₹12,500 inclusive of taxes, checked 21 August 2026
- Press Information Bureau, 20 September 2025 — footwear up to ₹2,500 a pair at 5% GST
- Footwear GST rates — 18% above ₹2,500 a pair from 22 September 2025
- UL Solutions — the Footwear Quality Control Order 2024, effective 1 August 2024, covering sports footwear
- Business & Human Rights Resource Centre — the March 2021 China social media post and Asics head office disavowing it as unauthorised
- ASPI, Uyghurs for Sale — the published 82-brand list, which does not include Asics
- Sheffield Hallam, Laundering Cotton, Annex D — the corporate responses annex, in which Asics does not appear
- Leave Russia tracker — Asics recorded as a complete exit from the Russian market
- Asics CDP Climate Change 2023 — Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, the −63% targets against 2015, and progress of −22% and −3.1% respectively
- Asics climate action — SBTi approval, RE100 membership since 2020 and net zero by 2050
- Asics anti-counterfeiting activities — enforcement work described in Vietnam, Thailand and China, with no mention of India and no consumer guidance
How we research and verify brand audits:
our methodology.
Asics is the most technically credible brand of the global names sold here, and the one whose story is most consistently misreported. It is not a company riding a running boom. Running grew 11% last year while its lifestyle businesses grew 43%, and it is about to move Onitsuka Tiger into a subsidiary of its own precisely because that side has become too big and too different to run inside a shoe company. The revival is a fashion revival that a running company happens to own.
For Indian buyers the verdict is unusually good. Asics prices below American list on every model we could check, makes nearly a third of what it sells here in India, and built its credibility in this market by sponsoring races for seven years before it opened a shop. That is a brand behaving like it intends to stay.
What deserves scrutiny is the environmental arithmetic, where a 63% supply-chain target sits against 3.1% of progress and sales that have doubled. That is not unique to Asics. It is true of Asics.
The best-engineered running brand you can buy in India, growing on shoes nobody runs in.
